A couple of months ago I picked up 2 books at the same garage sale: The Harvest of Hellenism, A History of the Near East from Alexander the Great to the Triumph of Christianity, by F. E. Peters andWhy I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand RussellI just finished the first and started the second for some fascinating and entertaining juxtapositions. Caution, the first uses a lot of unfamiliar (to me) words to describe all the cults and heresies and schools of thought that finally coalesced into "official" Christianity around 325 AD.

gkaplan wrote:I'm about sixty-five pages into Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. I have read two other biographies by Chernow, so I know this one will be excellent, as were the other two.

Which other two have you read? I thought Alexander Hamilton was fantastic, and though I enjoyed Washington I didn't think it rose quite to the former's level. I still have Titan and The House of Morgan sitting in a box somewhere to be read.

Not sure how original is "original," but it seems to me that there were vast numbers of copies in a publisher's series... what was it called... edited by May Lamberton Becker, and that they included the Wyeth illustrations..,

and

FabLab wrote:

I'm thinking that even though you mentioned Wilmington, DE, you were referring to the Brandywine River Museum on Route 1 in Chadds Ford, PA.

Thank you both for the responses and the clarifications. In both cases my writing was imprecise. I was-- and still am-- seeking the Wyeth editions of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Mysterious Island. The word "original" was unnecessary.

And yes, the Brandywine Museum is in Chadds Ford, PA, over the border from Wilmington.

During the same trip, we were also able to visit the Wyeth Center at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Both exhibits were excellent; both are highly recommended.

OK... enough... back to books.

-- Cinghiale
|
| "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." Anais Nin

I need some input here. I just finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Now, more out of curiosity and compulsion than out of the quality of the literature, I am about one-third into The Girl Who Played With Fire.

My question is: Huh? What's the deal here? Why the cult status? Why the perma-position on the best seller lists? This is not good writing. And, where is the appeal of these story lines, these characters, and the rather stark descriptions of violence and sexual assualt to female readers?

And, I can't believe that the prose is simply scintillating in Swedish but somehow loses all its verve and flow in translation.

Are the fans out there? Care to enlighten someone who just doesn't get it?

-- Cinghiale | | | | "We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are." Anais Nin

cinghiale wrote:I need some input here. I just finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Now, more out of curiosity and compulsion than out of the quality of the literature, I am about one-third into The Girl Who Played With Fire.

My question is: Huh? What's the deal here? Why the cult status? Why the perma-position on the best seller lists? This is not good writing. And, where is the appeal of these story lines, these characters, and the rather stark descriptions of violence and sexual assualt to female readers?

And, I can't believe that the prose is simply scintillating in Swedish but somehow loses all its verve and flow in translation.

Are the fans out there? Care to enlighten someone who just doesn't get it?

I enjoyed all 3 books in this trilogy. Certainly some readers may not.

Just finished Fredrick Forsyth's "The Cobra". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Forsyth I have been a Forsyth fan for years but this one didn't do much for me. Also recently finished Robert Parker's "Trouble in Paradice". It was a loser, seemed so cookie-cutter.

cinghiale wrote:My question is: Huh? What's the deal here? Why the cult status? Why the perma-position on the best seller lists? This is not good writing. And, where is the appeal of these story lines, these characters, and the rather stark descriptions of violence and sexual assualt to female readers?

I read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and did not appreciate it either. The graphic violence was unnecessary and unbelievable. Here's one for you - How about all the coffee this guy drinks? Everywhere he goes "...and they drank coffee" We never learn if it was good or bad, old or fresh, does he ever get the jitters from too much coffee? (Is he ever desperate to find a bathroom?) We are never privy to those thoughts but man does the hero consume some coffee.

While at the library to pick up Bill O'Rilley's Killing Lincoln, I browsed around a bit and found a copy of Bernstein's The Investor's Manifesto. After reading both I think the latter is more of a thriller!

While the moments do summersaults into eternity | Cling to their coattails and beg them to stay - Townes Van Zandt

Ohhhhh My, how things have changed over the past 40 years.I thought Leave It to Beaver was real based on my observations of the young family next door (60's).Don't think I want to win this race to the bottom.

Just finished And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis. An entertaining history of rum and the New World. Now reading, The New Geography of Jobs, by Enrico Moretti.

"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful." - George E. P Box

I'm on a Jeff Shaara run... my wife just about chain-read all of his books over the last few years and kept telling me they were good, but I kept stalling. Finished The Rising Tide and The Steel Wave, just started No Less Than Victory. Rather like Patrick O'Brian (which is a high compliment), not in style or subject matter, but in his ability to convey the chaos, the importance of chance, and the multifactorial nature of it all (the strategy was good but they couldn't get supplies; or, the strategy and the supplies were good but the weather was bad, etc.)

Also, Paul Collins, The Murder of the Century. Good, but not as good as The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine.

The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens

Normally I'm a big fan of Hitch, but I thought he was somewhat less than fair here. In situations where I would tend to see Mother Theresa as politically neutral for the sake of fundraising, he painted her as fully complicit with corruption, criminal individuals and cruel political regimes. I do think he had some valid criticisms -- providing absolute minimal medical care because she feels suffering is critical to the religious experience, despite easily being able to provide better, strikes me as abominable.

Just finished "The Clash of the Cultures." Can't see why anyone who believes in active management would continue their ways after reading this book. We have become too infatuated with the daily movement of the stock market to maintain the discipline of long-term investing. Too bad, society as a whole is a loser when paying excessive fees and comissions to Wall Street.

Free market capitalist by the way, but fully subscribe to the notion that there are "value adders" ie productive enterprise and the mere "renters" that are intermediaries for financial transactions.

I'm reading a detective/mystery novel by Elizabeth George, "Playing for the Ashes." I'm not usually much of a mystery reader, but this is pretty nice - much better written than the usual hack job in this genre. The authoress is an American who writes English novels, which for me is a red flag, but she carries it off pretty well without coming across as too much of an Anglophile fangirl. Good, in-depth characterization of most of the principals, except oddly the main detectives, who could do with some fleshing out. Good overall.

Bungo wrote:I'm reading a detective/mystery novel by Elizabeth George, "Playing for the Ashes." I'm not usually much of a mystery reader, but this is pretty nice - much better written than the usual hack job in this genre. The authoress is an American who writes English novels, which for me is a red flag, but she carries it off pretty well without coming across as too much of an Anglophile fangirl. Good, in-depth characterization of most of the principals, except oddly the main detectives, who could do with some fleshing out. Good overall.

Elizabeth George is a terrific author. Her Inspector Lynley stories became a series on Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS.

Bungo wrote:I'm reading a detective/mystery novel by Elizabeth George, "Playing for the Ashes." I'm not usually much of a mystery reader, but this is pretty nice - much better written than the usual hack job in this genre. The authoress is an American who writes English novels, which for me is a red flag, but she carries it off pretty well without coming across as too much of an Anglophile fangirl. Good, in-depth characterization of most of the principals, except oddly the main detectives, who could do with some fleshing out. Good overall.

Elizabeth George is a terrific author. Her Inspector Lynley stories became a series on Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS.

Elizabeth George is the only writer we buy in hardbound, because she is the only writer for whom we feel we can't wait.

After reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational," it was encouraging to read his follow-up, "The Upside of Irrationality" and learn that all is not lost by being irrational. As Ariely says, our irrational ways let us "adapt to new environments, trust other people, enjoy expending effort, and love our kids." And he demonstrates all that very nicely.

Fallible wrote:After reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational," it was encouraging to read his follow-up, "The Upside of Irrationality" and learn that all is not lost by being irrational. As Ariely says, our irrational ways let us "adapt to new environments, trust other people, enjoy expending effort, and love our kids." And he demonstrates all that very nicely.

I've seen some of his TED talks, I like him alot. It's been posted before, but he has a coursera course coming up. In case you missed that post:

Fallible wrote:After reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational," it was encouraging to read his follow-up, "The Upside of Irrationality" and learn that all is not lost by being irrational. As Ariely says, our irrational ways let us "adapt to new environments, trust other people, enjoy expending effort, and love our kids." And he demonstrates all that very nicely.

I've seen some of his TED talks, I like him alot. It's been posted before, but he has a coursera course coming up. In case you missed that post: ...

If you mean the Coursera course for next March, I've signed up along with several other Bogleheads. I think you're referring to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=99671